Vanguard Meaning
/ˈvanˌɡɑːd/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounThe leading units at the front of an army or fleet.
nounThe person(s) at the forefront of any group or movement.
Sentence Examples
The Communist Party is the vanguard of the working class.
An army was divided into the vanguard, the rearguard and the main body.
CEFR Practice Quiz
In the military march, the ____ consisted of the best soldiers moving first.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The company has always been in the ____ of electronic technology, developing several new and innovative products every single year today.
Word Origin & History
Earlier forms included vandgard and (a)vantgard with or without aphetism, derived from Old French avan(t)garde (“before guard”). Doublet of avant-garde and vaward.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"They ſay, that the King diuided his Armie into three Battailes; whereof the Vant-guard onely well ſtrengthened with wings, came to fight."
— 1622, Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban [i.e. Francis Bacon], The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, […], London: […] W[illiam] Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret, →OCLC, page 35:
"By some paradoxical evolution rancour and intolerance have been established in the vanguard of primitive Christianity. Mrs. Spoker, in common with many of the stricter disciples of righteousness, was as inclement in demeanour as she was cadaverous in aspect."
— 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 4, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:
"[O]ne minute this "Jihadi John" was struggling to get by, and get accepted, in drizzly England, unemployed with a mortgage to pay and a chip on his shoulder, and the next he stands in brilliant Levantine sunlight, where everything is clear and etched, at the vanguard of some Sunni Risorgimento intent on subjecting the world to its murderous brand of Wahhabi Islam."
— 2014 November 17, Roger Cohen, “The horror! The horror! The trauma of ISIS [print version: International New York Times, 18 November 2014, page 9]”, in The New York Times:
"The outsiders are looking more like insiders, the vanguard of a cultural and political shift that could be far more profound than in his first presidency."
— 2025 January 20, Simon Montlake, “‘We’re the majority now’: MAGA returns to Washington, with a whole new vibe”, in The Christian Science Monitor:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
In the military march, the ____ consisted of the best soldiers moving first.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The company has always been in the ____ of electronic technology, developing several new and innovative products every single year today.